


Thought and Memory 3: Some Desperate Glory

by Raven (Temaris)



Series: Thought and Memory [3]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-26
Updated: 2003-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:36:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temaris/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JD is forced into a new beginning, while those left behind begin the weary business of letting go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thought and Memory 3: Some Desperate Glory

The worst thing about being up in the mountains in the tropics, was there was nothing you could wear that suited the temperature. At night he froze. By day he sweltered. He shoved his hand through his hair, lifting the short strands away from his over-heated scalp. He was still surprised by the shortness of it, but between that and the dogtags at least he looked vaguely military. Which considering the crew he was going in with, was more than slightly important.

Harris was snoring. He kicked him with one booted toe, and watched as the agency man grunted and turned over in his sleeping bag, twisting the cocoon tightly about himself in the process. He grinned briefly, picturing the man's attempts to get out his sleeping bag yesterday in the same circumstances. No longer on his back, the man was quiet.

Lieutenant Hu, their primary sniper and one of three black ops soldiers on the team was sleeping too, silently. The man never spoke a word that wasn't required, and JD got the distinct feeling that he thought he should be running the op instead of Antonov. For now, he did as he was told, and rarely volunteered anything. He watched Hu for a few moments then pulled his eyes away, uneasily convinced that the man was watching him back in his sleep.

Reynolds, another black ops man and their second sniper, was sitting on the far side of the clearing his rifle across his knees. Technically he was supposedly on watch, although at the moment he seemed to be eating. JD shook his head. The man was as bad as Vin for continuous snacking. It was a mystery where he put all that food and for that matter, where he found it.

Major Antonov was snoring softly on the far side of Harris, but even if he'd been closer he wouldn't have tried kicking him to get him to stop. He didn't like Antonov, commanding officer or no. The Major had an attitude about JD's position and role in the team, an attitude about Larabee and the rest of JD's former team -- and just for kicks, an attitude for everything else too. Most of them included thinking JD was a pansy assed civilian with no clue how to wipe his own butt, never mind participate in a military operation. On the other hand, he was the next best thing to JD for computer skills, plus he was nominally in charge of this somewhat illegal (distinctly illegal, he thought uncomfortably) team. He sighed and wished he was sitting with his friends instead of five men who despised him.

For one thing, if the rest of the seven were there, there would be none of the resentful skirmishes about jobs and assignments. Larabee would be doing that with his usual combination of terse instructions and meaningful glares. The rest of them would know what they were supposed to do, and get on with it. No personalities, or one-upmanship. A quick grin split his face, well, maybe some one-upmanship. One or two personalities.

He yawned hugely. He ought to sleep, but time was running out, and he still had trouble falling asleep in daylight, no matter that he had been up all night. He couldn't help running the plan over and over in his head. It hadn't changed fundamentally from his initial one back in Oregon at the DCD. Some refinements had been added, but in essence, it was the same. A diversion, take out the high points, and then a team of four men to infiltrate the fortress. Tonight they went in under cover of darkness. Harris, Antonov and Evans to back him up. He yawned again and closed his eyes. He'd reached the point that he was so tired he didn't care about the blazing sunlight. He had six or so hours. He snuggled deeper into the sleeping bag and let himself drift to sleep.

It barely seemed any time at all before someone shook his shoulder roughly. "Get up, Dunne."

JD rolled onto his back. It was full dark, and the new moon meant that only starlight and the faint light from the hill fort illuminated the landscape. He pulled his boots out from the foot of his sleeping bag and dragged them on, then packed up the bag into a tiny bundle and squared it away with the rest of the stuff that was getting left behind.

Silently he pulled out his bag and ran his eyes over the equipment. Half a dozen universal cables and connectors. A handful of cds and floppy disks, even a five inch one just in case. A memory block and a bunch of the tiny mem cubes, just in case. Screwdrivers, pliers, circuit breakers, ribbons, it was more like a hardware callout than a hacking job. His software was in his pda, and duplicated in the pda Antonov was carrying. If they were really lucky, they'd be able to use them and not the disks to upload the new data. Four kilos of extra weight that had been nodded through without question. He felt a prickling on the back of his neck and looked up. Antonov was staring at him, and he simply nodded.

"Boys?" Antonov said quietly. Without a word the team surrounded him.

JD stood and pulled the pack/jacket on, hastily doing up the zip and straps and joined them. Their quick response and silence was encouraging. He looked around them. Perhaps this would work out.

"You all know what to do. Time is eleven pm on my mark --" They checked their watches. They had already synchronized once, but a double check made sense, JD thought.

"Mark!" He glanced around them. "Dunne, stay close. Hu, Reynolds." He held the men's eyes for a moment each, then nodded, and the snipers melted into the jungle. "Evans, you're with Harris. You--"

"I hold the wall, he holds the tower."

Harris nodded in agreement.

"Good."

They crept through the darkness, moving fast but silent. Antonov's hand went up and the others stopped dead. JD almost stumbled into him before stopping too.

"First line fencing."

Evans pulled out bolt cutters and heavy gloves and cut a careful line along the base of the buried fence, and then up along one of the supports where it could be concealed. JD watched, and then looked around. There was a thirty foot clear area between the fence and the wall, swept every ten seconds by searchlights. Men stood on the high walls of the fort. One or two were clearly on watch, bolt upright, moving steadily to and fro. A curl of smoke drifted upwards and he could see the spark of a cigarette glowing red in the darkness behind the searchlights.

JD checked his watch. Half an hour. He retreated from the fence and settled with his back to a tree. It would take the snipers longer to get in place, and without them nothing was guaranteed.

* * *

JD muttered darkly to himself as he followed Evans across the compound, crouching low. His P-90 glinted dully in his hands. Evans paused at the foot of the second wall, the outside wall of the main building. He hurried up and crouched by him, only the whites of his eyes and even teeth stretched in a smile visible in the dark and under the camouflage makeup.

He grinned back.

"Ready?" Antonov's nasal drawl reminded him strongly of Boston, home long ago.

"Two ready," he said softly into his headset.

"Three ready."

The others all checked in over their radios, up to Six, Reynolds, the second sniper who with Hu had cleared the compound of guards in a burst of silent, deadly accurate sharp shooting. This was the last communication until they met back at the rendezvous -- a small clearing two miles back from the fortress. From here on in, they had radio blackout.

Antonov's harsh voice broke silence one more time, with the final order. "Go! Go! Go!"

And they were moving again. A rope and grapple flung high onto the roof, tugged, caught, held. Harris was up it like a monkey, hand over hand, a dark spiderlike blur in the darkness against the white of the fortress walls. He took the high ground, watching for reinforcements for the murdered soldiers. Evans would guard this door, holding passage open for them. Antonov waited at his back, standing too close, his presence making JD's back itch.

JD ignored them all after the first glance and concentrated on the electronic lock at the entrance. Electronic or not, the lock gave way in moments to his pda's assault. A smirk slid across his face as the lock popped and he was in. Antonov followed him, and the door slid silently shut behind them.

The corridor was dimly lit, and he frowned. They would be instantly visible to anyone. He flipped the lights off and slid his night vision goggles into place. He had memorized the floor plans -- now, where did he need to go?

Ah. He jogged swiftly down the corridor, took the third left. Towards the end of that was another closed door, this time locked the old fashioned way.

"Thanks, Ezra," he murmured as the lock popped open almost as quickly as the electronic one. A trick Standish had taught him, with Buck complaining bitterly at every turn. A quick look both ways, and up, before hurrying down the stairs, Antonov a few paces behind, watching his back. The servers were in a subterranean basement where they could be kept cool out of the tropical heat and humidity.

Antonov took up guard at the doorway, and JD nodded to him before silently breaking through the last door. Another electronic lock, this one more sophisticated than either of the previous ones. He pushed the goggles up and tapped urgently at the clever little program, tweaking parameters until with an almost inaudible click, and a hiss of escaping pressurized air, the door slid open. He took a quick step forward and shut it behind him, then performed the same routine to get the other side of the airlock to open. It was faster this time, he noticed smugly. Reprogramming encryption on the fly was what had kept him out of jail back when he had been a hacker.

Now he was hacking for his country. It had to be karma. And it was about to get worse.

The clean room was white and noiseless save for the soft burring of fans. It only took a minute to identify the controlling boards, and was astonished to discover that there was no initial access control encryption to get into the system. It was only when he attempted to access root privileges that it demanded a user name and password.

And that was the real reason he was here. The only man in the world who knew, with absolute certainty, where the weak points were in this system's security programs. The only one who could trick and deform the code far beyond anything any other hacker or programmer could ever do. Who knew who how to snap the thin lines of protection that each algorithm and key provided.

The man who wrote it.

He had hacked his own software before, trying to break it before he sold it. But that was nearly ten years ago, and computers had changed since then. The software had changed. He'd changed.

He waited as an underscore blinked wearily on a blank screen. One knee jigged nervously, and he clenched his jaw. "Come on," he whispered encouragingly, desperately, "come on, come on, come on..."

The screen flickered. A shiver raised goosebumps all over his body, and he was abruptly aware of the chill of the computer room, the sweat trickling down his back and sticking his clothes to him in uncomfortable swathes.

A string of code filled the screen, reading as easily as headline newsprint to his eyes. It rolled on, scrolling onwards, the program rolling over and offering its vulnerable underside for tickling.

He couldn't help a yelped "Yes!" as the system unfolded before him. He looked around, but there was no one there. Not a sound to even indicate that Antonov was still standing guard outside the stairwell. For a moment, hands poised above the keyboard, he wondered what the hell he was doing here, thousands of miles away from everyone who loved him, and whom he loved. Casey. Buck. The guys.

No time.

The memory writer was swiftly plugged into the box, and he quickly wrote as much as he could to disk. And again, and again. Finally he had used all twenty HD memory blocks, and he unplugged it, rolling his shoulders as he packed them back away. Stage two.

He started with the weapons silos. Each one was opened, the passwords re-encrypted, and the changes locked into the systems access. Not even the hard keys would allow anyone without the passwords into the buildings, much less the launch sequences. Then the control centers, the distributed attack bunkers, everything all the way up to the defense ministry management systems, deleted, recoded, and restored with the data that his government wanted them to have, leaving a system that looked the same, but had a quarter of the data, and less functionality than the average high school library.

It took very little time at all to destroy the systems in such a way that they could never be used again. It took longer to introduce new software into the root systems of the senior servers. But he did it. Even if the techs tried to restore from backups, the system would refuse to take them. At the very least, they would have to buy new computers. And then they would discover that the encrypted pass codes and access points for launching any of the missiles stored here or anywhere in Tiengo had been changed. Right now, he was the only man on the planet who knew them.

He slid a cd from a pocket out of its slip and into the machine. Last step.

He smiled as the disk quietly installed a worm to the central server, all its defenses down. The last layer of the most complete destruction of a computer network he had ever perpetrated. Atiyah didn't know about this part. It, with his knowledge of the codes was his insurance. Something to encourage them to keep him alive. With any luck at all the worm would spread right through the network, disseminating to key users and their contacts. Destroying their computers one by one.

Best of all, and the only thing that he could placate his uneasy conscience with, if Atiyah's people tried to take advantage of Tiengo's vulnerability, they would catch it too. With a bonus present. A file wrapped in encryption that only Buck Wilmington could open, delivered by hand, triggered by their own cupidity. Today was his first chance to be on his own on a live network since his kidnapping. He had no doubt that if DCD and Atiyah had their way, it would be his last chance too, until the next time they forced him into something like this. So while he had been planning the destruction of Tiengo's nuclear strategy, he had been arranging his own strategy. A time bomb, waiting for the right trigger. The second the federal government caught his virus, he'd know. And then Buck would know. And then no power on earth would stop them coming for him.

He closed his eyes briefly and saw them, grinning viciously back at him, and he nodded curtly at the memories.

"I'm done," he told Chris, who dipped his head briefly. Buck shook his head in resignation, and Ezra quirked an approving grin. Vin nodded at him, and Josiah smiled glacially. Nathan whispered softly, "You be damn careful, boy," and JD nodded again, a softer smile pulling at his lips.

It wouldn't shut down Tiengo permanently. It wouldn't stop anyone using backups. If someone with a brain shut down and isolated the network it would be a repairable, very expensive, mostly temporary system failure. But the virus would slow down the discovery of his work for a few hours, maybe even days, depending on how good they were. And by the time they noticed the layers of destruction under the virus, the results should be catastrophic.

"Not as good as me," he said softly, and stood.

Now, they just had to get back out, and he could go home.

* * *

Chris Larabee closed his eyes and tilted his head back. One by one his shoulder and neck muscles creaked and pulled until he tried to release the tension in them, rubbing roughly at his shoulders. He dragged his hands forwards when they only hurt, and rubbed his face.

Three months and still no sign.

Buck's mood swings were painful for everyone around him. He'd tried to urge the big man to take time off, to start the process of moving on. Instead he teetered from miserable to furious and back again, unable to keep his mind on the job, useless to Larabee and Team Seven.

No one else on the team believed JD was alive. It had been too long. If they were sure of nothing else, they were sure that nothing, *nothing* would stop JD coming back, if he could.

Dead. Disabled. In a coma, unknown. Kidnapped. Abducted by aliens.

Lost.

It didn't help that everyone in the ATF, most people in Denver's law enforcement community, and large numbers of state and federal agents elsewhere knew he was missing, knew to look for him. The longer it went, the less chance that JD was alive.

John Doe's had their prints run against his when there was even the most fractional chance. In two cases, it had been dna evidence that had to be used, the bodies so damaged by time and exposure. Each failure another nail in JD's coffin.

He held still for a long moment. He couldn't refuse any longer. He was certain that it was merely a matter of days before Travis would make them stop looking.

A bleak look settled in his eyes. Buck would never stop looking, until they found the boy's body, wherever Madison had put him. Madison went to trial in less than a month, all being well. He'd go down hard, but almost certainly not for JD's murder. Not that anyone had dared say it yet. It was things like this that made him doubt all over again the reasons he had ever joined law enforcement. What was the point when innocents died, alone, unburied, sleeping an uneasy rest that haunted the dreams of those left behind? There was no god. No heaven. No hell save this one on earth, where every day dragged like bitter winter on the soul. No justice except that of your own two hands, and the anger in your heart that sometimes drowned out the pain.

He leaned forward and picked up his pen. The transfer approval form needed only his signature and Mark Nicholson would join Team Seven as computer consultant. JD's replacement.

He signed his name in firm black lines and pushed the paper away.

He'd tell the rest of the team tomorrow.

* * *

He ran.

Behind him the compound exploded with sound and he didn't dare look back, bringing the P-90 up, dive for cover, the scant shelter of a few bushes enough to give him a moment and he rolled, brought the gun up, sighted, fired. Men went down, backlit by flames as they dropped. He rose to a crouch and run as best he could back to the rendezvous.

Burning pain seared through his side. Gun shot. He swore, and clapped his right hand to the wound, transferred the gun to his left, taking pot shots back as he retreated.

"Where are we people?" he gasped. "Six, call it."

"One?" Corporal Reynolds sounded confused, and JD gritted his teeth. There was no time to do anything except do it.

JD swallowed, and broke the news to the team. "One's dead."

"Two, repeat?" Three sounded incredulous.

He repeated, "Two. One's dead. Back at the fort. He covered my exit." He couldn't feel horror. Couldn't feel gratitude. Couldn't feel anything.

He hadn't liked Antonov. And now he owed the man his life, a debt that he could never repay.

"I'm going to be there in five minutes," he said into the mic. "Six, call it," he ordered again, harshly, suddenly worried that they wouldn't follow his command.

"Two?" Six, Reynolds, began roll call, and JD closed his eyes briefly in relief, then started moving again, low to the ground. The dull ache in his side was slick to the touch, even through his fatigues.

"Incoming," he gasped into the mic at his throat.

"Three?"

"On my way," Hu's laconic tones were punctuated by single shots, each one, JD knew picking off one of the guards teeming out of the fort like angry ants.

"Four."

There was a long silence and JD winced. Evans had been polite, uninterested and uninteresting, but it was still hard.

"Four?"

Still no word. He stumbled over an unseen liana and left a bloody handprint on a tree as he tried to keep himself upright. Damn.

"Five?"

"Right with you." Harris had made it then. "Coming in from the Northwest in five. Will meet you en route."

"Three, report."

"In place, sir, awaiting your arrival." Thank god. JD sighed silently. Hu could take orders, understood the chain of command, but he had been the one JD had most feared would buck the official chain of command and try to take over. There was something to be said for military discipline after all.

"Is the transport ready?"

"Yes sir."

Horses for the first forty miles. Then a jeep concealed in a cave north of here. A hundred more miles till the safest border crossing, with the Tiengonese army dogging them at every step. He lifted his hand and glanced at the blood dripping from it, then plastered it against the injury again. Nothing he could do about it. More gun fire in the distance, but Harris must have drawn them off to the west. He whispered a thanks to the DCD agent, and abruptly was in the clearing.

"Can you ride, sir?" Hu snapped, taking in the hand gripping at dark stained BDUs.

"Show me the damn horse." He knew he sounded surly and arrogant, but it was better than fainting. He mounted free handed, and sat back in the light English saddle, settling his military issued automatic across his thighs. Hell, there were worse things in this life than channeling Chris Larabee.

A bright smile crossed his face, and he chuckled. Maybe it was blood loss making him light headed. But it sure felt like the boys were at his back, even if he couldn't see them.

"Mount up, boys," he ordered, ignoring the irony on calling the men who were all older than him, if only by months in Harris's case, 'boys'. "We ride."

"Yessir," Hu complied, swinging up easily. Moments later Reynolds was with them. Harris would make four when they met him. Four out of the six would be going back. Briefly he was grateful that he wasn't leaving behind any friends, and shuddered. This had made him cold and harder than he had ever wanted to be. But Antonov and Evans hadn't cared that he had been kidnapped and held hostage by his own principles to carry out a military operation against a sovereign state that wasn't even a threat to his own. They hadn't cared that he was lost. They probably didn't even know.

He knew nothing about them, and now they were dead. Better them than him. Better them than his brothers.

He slapped the reins and headed out of the clearing. He pulled out his military GPS and turned it on. It silently oriented him and he corrected his path. One day if they were lucky. Two if they weren't.

Too bad about Evans. He tightened his grip on his bleeding flank. He'd been the team medic.

* * *

"No!" Buck struggled against Josiah and Nathan's grips, glaring at Travis, "No! You can't take us off the case!"

"Buck, there is no case," Orin Travis' voice was kind, but the steel in his eyes told the others that he would brook no disobedience. "There is no evidence that JD survived Madison's attentions. He knows that we can't arraign him for murder without the body, he has no interest in providing the closure we *all* want." His eyes softened. "I've given you boys as much latitude as I could. We all have. But it's been three months. Don't you think perhaps he would have got a message to you by now? Somehow? If he had been--"

"No!" Buck said again, but his voice broke halfway through the word, "I just need more time. You can't give up on him."

"We aren't giving up, Buck," Josiah said softly, and Buck wrenched himself away from the man's hold contemptuously.

"Buck."

Buck paused.

"You've got to let go," Chris said softly, as though there were no one else in the room. "We can't search forever."

"Speak for yourself, Larabee," Buck said, but while the words were defiant, the tone was low and defeated. He turned and met his oldest friend's eyes. "Please, Chris? It's only been three months. We can't give up on him now."

"Don't you think he'd move heaven and earth to come home. If he could?" Nathan asked gently, and Buck swallowed convulsively.

"Maybe he's being held against his will. Associates of Madison--"

"Buck, we've shaken every tree that we could, and a few we should have let be," Vin said patiently.

"There is word out with every contact, legitimate, or otherwise. Buck, my friend," Ezra stepped forward and met Wilmington's eyes. "There is nothing. Not so much as a rumor of a whisper of a hint."

"I ain't giving up on him."

"None of us are," Chris said softly, "it's just -- if he's still alive, he's going to have to help us before we can help him."

"Buck," Travis's voice was kind, and that was almost the last straw for Wilmington. He didn't turn to look at the man, merely waited, shoulders slumped for the next blow. "I won't ask you to stop looking. I'm happy for you to use ATF resources, just, please, not on company time." He gestured at the world beyond his window, "The world goes on, crime goes on. The war against crime goes on. Ask yourself, would JD want you to stop the fight just because he couldn't be by your side?"

Buck's eyes stung, and he shrugged off the hand on his back. "No." He walked out of the office without waiting for his dismissal, a last little piece of defiance before he went on, without his brother.

* * *

"Damn!"

"Hold still, sir," Harris told him, and JD gritted his teeth. Hu had had a shallow graze on his upper left arm, not his shooting arm, a battle dressing was more than sufficient to keep it clean and healing. His side however, the bullet had sliced through, expanding as it went, so that the wound was narrow in the front, and a hole three inches across at the back. Because it was relatively shallow, there was very little unharmed flesh between the entry and exit wounds, making it harder to seal the injury against the germs and humidity of the jungle.

Inevitably, it had gotten infected, so now Harris had the unenviable task of cleaning, disinfecting, and rebandaging the ugly wound.

He dropped his head back against the seat, and winced as they bounced over a particularly rough strip of road. The horses had taken them the forty miles to the jeep, undetected as yet. It had been three days -- two longer than they had initially planned for, but the countryside was more populated than expected, and the route had become more and more circuitous.

More than once they had found themselves face to face with tribesmen carrying anything from spears to guns, lethal kris curved with wickedly lethal edges held watchfully, and yet another village had to be skirted. There had been no sign of the military. The locals had no love for the whites who ran the country, and who had gradually stolen their lands, their religion and their way of life giving back only disease and pollution. Hopefully they wouldn't notify the authorities of the five Americans making their way through the back country.

JD hoped that the catastrophic failure of their computer systems would keep the military confused and off their trail at least another day, but they couldn't rely on it, they'd already used up more of their grace period than he thought they would get. All it took was one man with enough rank and brains and a telephone outside the military network, and they could find themselves on the wrong end of an all out man hunt. The jeep had had food, water, and best of all, extra medical supplies.

He took a gulp of water from the bottle clutched in his right hand, and sighed as the lukewarm liquid soothed its way down his throat.

"What next, sir?" Hu asked neutrally, and JD turned his head to find the lieutenant watching him, one arm hooked around the driver's headrest.

"Reynolds?" JD asked, he was tired, but he felt as though he was floating above it, leaving a terrible clarity of thought that couldn't last long. Hu had been pushing. The man was senior in everything except the assigned chain of command, and it clearly irked him to have to follow the orders of a snot nosed civilian. Unfortunately, no one knew about his little insurance policy. If Hu wanted to take the squad he could. JD was painfully aware that he had neither the tactical nor the martial skills to face down the black ops sniper, even when he was in decent health. Right now he couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag. Ordinarily, Hu probably commanded his own team, and if he could get him on his side the man would be a huge asset. However, nothing he had done indicated anything but his disapproval of a situation that left JD Dunne in charge. He was going to have to do this with brains and command presence.

He was doomed.

"How far to the border?" He could at least put together their current status.

"Another thirty miles, sir."

"Any sign of pursuit?" he asked Hu, who shook his head. He was monitoring the radio transmissions on Tiengonese military, civilian and police bands.

"Nothing."

"Which could be good, or could mean they've figured out that we're listening."

"That's about it," Hu said calmly. "Any orders, sir?"

JD frowned at the inflection of 'sir', but as the man wasn't actually being insubordinate --yet -- he let it slide.

"Thoughts?"

"Follow the plan mapped out."

"Contact with base is out of the question."

"Fine." JD bit his lip hard as Harris poured peroxide over the open wound. "We stick to the plan. If we're not being chased yet, we probably have enough of a head start to clear the border before they know where to look for us."

"Unless they send out choppers," Hu pointed out, and JD nodded.

"Let's not borrow trouble--"

"Perhaps we should plan for the contingency," Hu interrupted smoothly, and JD abruptly wanted to punch that sly, smooth mouth until it lost a few teeth.

"You took the words right out of my mouth, Hu," he smiled back easily. Now was not the time to lose his temper. He'd done what they needed him for, and until they knew that he'd given himself some insurance he wasn't safe. Maybe now was a good time to mention it, and watch the complicated politics of the team rearrange themselves to protect him, instead of lining up quietly on the 'injured, expendable, disposable' side of the fence. "Whatever else happens, we have to get back to the States. I have some information that has to go to DCD as fast as possible. Without it the mission could be a complete waste of time, money, and lives." He paused significantly. Evans had been DCD, and Harris had known him. He had no idea if Antonov had any kind of friendship with the other two black ops men on the team, but everything he had heard about the type of man that got selected to the elite squads suggested that the soldiers would not need personal acquaintance to feel obligated to make his death meaningful. Both Harris and Reynolds were nodding slowly.

"What information?" Hu asked abruptly, and JD smirked. He couldn't help it, it was stupid, and dangerous, the single most antagonistic thing he could say, and the worst way of saying it to the one man most likely to shoot him out of hand and tip him out of the jeep, leaving him to bleed to death on foreign soil, where no one would ever hear about it, but he said it anyway, the smirk loud and clear in voice and face.

"Classified, lieutenant."

And in one word, the balance of power changed. Hu's eyes narrowed momentarily, and then he nodded, acknowledging not just the information, but JD's victory.

Harris taped gauze and then a heavy dressing back over the wound, but for all the pain, JD held Hu's gaze until the man's eyes slid away to the side.

"Let's get to it, then," he said firmly, and twisted to settle back in his seat. "Harris, check the lieutenant's shoulder please."

"Yes sir," Harris said cheerfully, and JD grinned at the rising moon, a tiny curved sliver, offering more light than they had had the previous two days in the dark of the new moon. Thirty miles to go. They should make the border in a little more than fifty minutes at this pace.

The road was steep and rocky, cutting through the mountains in steep rutted lines that were in places no more than goat tracks. They were high in the mountains now, coming up over one of the few passes that led out of the tiny country. The air was thin and clear, and their breath clouded in the freezing temperatures. The mountains were beautiful, snow capped peaks reaching high up into the sky, the stars burning in bright swathes in the unpolluted dark. They were Tiengo's sole reason for existing, cutting them off from a world that didn't care about them until they produced teeth. A ski resort gone mad, he thought wryly.

He should get some rest. Sleeping by day, traveling by night left all of them exhausted. Only four to take the watches, and only two fit for driving meant that none of them could afford to truly rest in more than two hour naps which were uncomfortable, and disturbed with each jungle noise, until they were past exhaustion. His own blood loss was not helping, and he knew that he was running a fever from the infection that had set into the wound. Harris had touched his forehead briefly, but said nothing when JD shook his head minutely. It made no difference. He took the penicillin shots that Harris gave him, and they both hoped that they would get out before gangrene set in.

He hoped they were going to get out period. If only he was better at this. If only he was trained for military ops, not merely a hacker turned software designer turned ATF agent. Then he might have a chance of bringing them home safe. Even the obnoxious Hu. And he missed the guys, God how he missed them. All he could do was try to think what they would do, and live up to their highest expectations. His eyes slid closed.

Highest expectations... he'd invaded a foreign power like a thief in the night, destroyed their ability to defend themselves, and was fleeing with the only thing that might have given them any kind of protection from the outside world. He'd killed soldiers defending their own country, far within their own borders. Men and women who had committed no crime. They'd simply been in the way of 'American interests'.

He drew a deep breath. He couldn't afford any sign of weakness or he too would be dead. "Hu, get some sleep. Harris, spell Reynolds in an hour or twenty miles, whichever we hit first. I want him free to shoot when we get to the border. We stop ten miles short of the border to prepare for crossing." He didn't open his eyes, and despite the growl of the engine, and the throbbing in his side, and his whirling thoughts, he slept.

* * *

  


> "Are you JD Dunne?"
> 
> JD whirled. The man in front of him was smartly dressed in a light grey suit. His brown hair was so short he couldn't be sure of much more than the lines of receding hair. The man's eyes were hidden behind darkly reflective sunglasses.
> 
> "Mike Simmons," he snapped, keeping his cover name, despite the knowledge that Madison had already made him. Perhaps this guy didn't know. "Get out of my way." He shoved past. The click of a safety had him dropping and rolling to one side, a gun in his left hand as he came up, his useless right tucked inside his shirt. He snapped off a shot, but the other had dodged without firing.
> 
> "Good reflexes, Mr. Dunne," the man commented. "You can call me Julius."
> 
> "I don't think I'll be calling you anything."
> 
> "I was under the impression you were right handed," he looked annoyed. "I'll have to have words with Research."
> 
> JD grinned ferally. His ambidexterity was a closely kept secret. Only his team mates knew that he was as good a shot left as he was right handed, and they'd only found out when they'd been pinned by cross fire one time. He kept his gun up and eased back to his feet. "I'm going now. If you keep very still you might just live to see another day."
> 
> "I have a job offer for you, Mr. Dunne. A job that we believe only you can do."
> 
> JD rolled his eyes. "Sure." He started to open the door gingerly using his battered right hand. His broken fingers screamed at him, but he ignored them. He had to get out and warn Larabee that Madison was on to them. And more importantly, get back to the team before Buck went apeshit.
> 
> "I work for a covert anti-terrorist branch of the federal government."
> 
> Somehow, JD didn't doubt him. "DHS?" He left the door closed but kept the handle twisted, even though pain throbbed louder and louder from his broken hand.
> 
> The man almost smiled. "Something like that."
> 
> "Well, thanks, but, no thanks. I have a job already. And I'm pretty damned happy with it. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get on with it."
> 
> He slipped out through the door, and felt a sting in his neck. His knees went under him, and he moaned as his hands hit the floor, trying vainly to hold him up. From a vast distance he heard the man's voice echo hollowly.
> 
> "I'm very sorry, Mr. Dunne, but you can not refuse. Lucas?"
> 
> "Sir?"
> 
> "Mr. Dunne will need immediate medical attention for his hand and any other injuries he may have. See to it."
> 
> "Yessir."
> 
> Someone lifted him easily, and he rolled his head slowly from where it lolled over the man's arm to look up at him. But darkness was calling, and for all he struggled against it, he fell into its deep grasp.

* * *

They crouched silently behind the rocks. The jeep had been abandoned five miles back. From here on in they were on foot, and on their own.

They'd made good time. It was still dark, though a glance at his watch told him that the sun would rise in barely two hours. They had that time to cross and make it to the pick up point. It should be possible, if they moved fast. He scowled into the darkness. He was the only one who might not make it. A hand on his shoulder gripped, and he turned his head. It was Harris.

He smiled at JD. It wasn't the agency man's fault that JD was in this position. He'd been the only friendly face for far too long, and JD smiled back.

"Not long, Dunne," he murmured, and JD nodded. He pointed at the guards leaning against the border fence.

"Can we get past them without killing them and bringing the rest of the enclave out?"

"Without killing them, I doubt it." Hu said tersely.

"Any other comments?"

There was silence and JD gritted his teeth. He didn't have time for this. "Lieutenant?"

"I can remove them both from here."

"The gun shot will alert the enclave before we even get to the gate." Harris observed.

"The gun is silenced."

"There's no other sound around, have you noticed?" Reynolds said softly from JD's right. "If those guys stop talking someone will come to see what's happened."

"So we need to be nearer to the crossing when they die." Harris said softly, and the others all nodded.

"Even the best silencer isn't *silent*. It's just quieter." JD gestured at the quiet scene. "Do you think it's quiet enough to bet your life on?"

"Knives then," Hu said dispassionately.

"I agree," JD nodded, and looked away from the three startled gazes. "Can you and Reynolds do it?"

"Me, sir?" Hu asked, a little too loud, and as the guards swung around, all four men froze. In the dark they were almost invisible, as long as they didn't move...

He breathed shallowly through his nose, waiting. His toes were cold. Sweat trickled slowly down his back where his pack was plastered against his fatigues, too hot. One of the straps pressed against his injury, and the throbbing seemed so loud that surely someone would hear it. His knees and the long muscles along his thighs began to protest at the long held position.

The soldiers were quartering the area, guns raised, the flashlights attached to them illuminating each rock and dip as they searched. Someone appeared at the gatehouse entrance, and JD held his breath.

The man shouted something, and one of the soldiers called back.

"Harris?" JD said, very, very quietly, lisping the final s, so it wouldn't carry in the still night air.

"They think it wath an animal," Harris murmured into his ear, so close his breath clung damply to his skin.

JD nodded minutely, and they waited. Finally the soldiers walked back to their posts, and the third man disappeared back inside.

"They know we're out here," Reynolds said.

"Ya think," Hu replied acidly and glared at JD.

"Shut up, Hu. It was your big mouth that just lost us half an hour and woke the guards back up," JD snapped. He didn't care any more if Hu decided to take him out, he was too damn close to home.

Hu's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

"Suggestions, anybody?"

"There's a path through the rocks above the pass." Reynolds squinted into the darkness. "It'll be pretty bad, but we should be able to make it."

JD traced the line the man was pointing to. "Are you sure," he asked dubiously. "Hu's shoulder and my injury aren't going to make us quick."

"We won't need quick. We just need quiet," Reynolds threw him a quick grin, "I'm pretty sure you can make it, sir."

"Let's do that then," he decided.

They waited another half hour before moving, leaving them barely an hour to cross the border. Once on the other side they would have to hole up and wait for nightfall again before moving on to the rendezvous point.

The path was treacherous. Shale slipped underfoot time and again. Tiny rocks twisted their ankles, invisible in the shadows cast by the boulders on either side of them made each step slow and cautious.

"Damn," Reynolds, ahead on point swore softly, and stopped.

"What?"

"Mines."

"*Damn*."

A tiny flashlight emerged from Reynolds' sleeve and he pointed out the tiny nubbin poking up from the thin soil, and then, to JD's growing horror, five more blocking their path. Reynolds looked around, then with a grim expression gestured to the rocks on the lee of the path. He indicated that they would have to scramble over the rocks to avoid touching the ground. The least vibration could trigger the bombs, and then it wouldn't matter if they were caught or not.

JD repressed a moan of pain as he dragged his body by main force over the side of a boulder, clinging to the near non-existent fissures. They lay low, bodies pressed close to the cold stone in an effort to keep below the skyline, and keep out of sight of the border guards. Every pull, every time he slithered forward on his stomach, his fingertips bleeding, his injury pulled and tore. Hot moisture flooded the stiff bandage, and he knew it had reopened.

It seemed as though it would never end. The world narrowed to the rocks, and moving forwards, creeping like a snake.

"Dunne? Dunne!"

He raised his head and found Reynolds' face right in front of him.

"You can get down here, sir," he said quietly, and helped him down. He slid to the ground, his eyes examining it closely before he landed, despite Reynolds reassurances.

He let out a shuddering breath. Somehow mines seemed worse than gunfire.

"How far?" he asked, then looked around. "That was it?"

The white grin was all the confirmation he needed, and energy flooded him. They had crossed the border, and were safe.

It was his last thought before blinding pain exploded in the back of his head. The last thing he saw was Reynolds' horrified expression. Then there was only darkness.


End file.
